A fun little sprite in the window of an architecture firm in Edgewater, Chicago

Back in December 2016, I remarked that world affairs were horrendous but that I would take a moment to celebrate some bright spots in my life. I'm not surprised that in the intervening years, I didn't write a similar end-of-year post, and I know we're not quite out of the dark yet, but I'm feeling hopeful for the future, nonetheless. Some reading, writing, and cooking highlights, forthwith!

According to my Goodreads Year in Books, the most popular book I read this year was War and Peace*, which in truth was a partial re-read during Yiyun Li and A Public Space's TolstoyTogether pandemic book club (which continues on as APSTogether). I first read War and Peace the summer between my first and second years at the University of Washington MFA program, as a way to counter my tendency toward sparse detail. It was quite pleasant to return to it this spring, but, alas, my reading life was too over-committed to stay the re-reading course with such a tome. The "least popular" book (for now!) I read won't actually be released until April 2021; please add my college friend Julian Mortimer Smith's wonderful collection The World of Dew and Other Stories to your to-read list!

Speaking of speculative short story collections by people named Julian, my one book review this year was of Julian K. Jarboe's Everyone On the Moon is Essential Personnel. I am sad The Seattle Review of Books went on hiatus, as it has been a wonderfully thoughtful venue for book reviews. My "Dispatch from a Pandemic" in Another Chicago Magazine might be another "highlight" from 2020 except for the whole pandemic part! At least I got to fall in love with the art of Belkis Ayón, profiled in my ACM piece. My last writing highlight of the year is my first short fiction published since 2018 (!), "Hinges" in Gordon Square Review. I had a lovely time at their virtual launch party getting to know a segment of the Cleveland literary community, which I wouldn't have been able to do under normal circumstances. This also gets me to closer to a side-goal I've had for several years, which I picked up from Seattle poet Susan Rich: get published in each of the 50 states. Still have quite a few states to go!

I am currently revising two novels, and between that, the pandemic, and writing 200+ "please vote" letters and postcards before the election, I think I'm going to cut myself some slack on "only" publishing three things this year. I think my biggest accomplishment, however, is learning how to make soup! I've made soup before. But it was always lacking the oomph my grandmother's boasted, even if I knew the secret ingredient in her chicken soup is beef. I've started collecting vegetable scraps in a big tub I keep in the freezer. And, at least once a month this spring and fall (not so much in the summer), I have had a cauldron bubbling, and my, what a comfort that has been.

My winter break plans? Chinese BBQ, baby bok choy, rainbow cookies shipped from Brooklyn (courtesy of my sweet MIL); Robert Altman's film Kansas City via our artsy cinema subscription, Metrograph; and, of course, the necessary trifecta of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, currently: Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist, Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, Michele Bombardier's What We Do.

Have a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season!

*NB: Links to books go to my Bookshop.org affiliate page. If you click through and make a purchase, you're simultaneously supporting independent bookstores, other authors, and me, via a small commission. (Want to make sure the commission goes to me? It should say "Anca L. Szilágyi" in the top left corner of the screen.) Thank you!

Neither of these are the physical book fair, but they are *both* at the #AWPVirtualbookfair!

Last year around this time, Michael and I traipsed about Portland for AWP, skirting the conference itself, simply enjoying off-site readings and the book fair on Saturday. It was a lovely way to round out our time in the Pacific Northwest.

This year, because of our move, I never had any intentions of going to the conference in San Antonio, but because of the coronavirus, lots of folks, including my publisher Lanternfish Press have cancelled their trips. Because small presses depend on AWP each year for sales, a virtual book fair has been set up as a Google Doc by Trevor Ketner, publisher of Skull + Wind Press, inspired by poets G. Calvocoressi, Dana Levin, and Greg Pardlo. Now folks can browse from afar, and check out the many beautiful books and journals on sale here at #AWPVirtualBookfair. In random scrolling through the virtual book fair, I came across this intriguing book of poetry, Goodbye Wolf, by Nik De Dominic. Most discount codes are good through Sunday. Lanternfish Press is offering 30% off all of their books (including Daughters of the Air); use the code AWP2020.

Another press I love that has cancelled its trip to San Antonio is Fairy Tale Review. Their newest issue, back issues, subscriptions, and the complete set of issues are 20% off. Use code AWP20. The title story of my in-progress story collection, "More Like Home Than Home," is in their Wizard of Oz-themed Emerald Issue. It's set in Brooklyn in the 1980s and is a potpourri of the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Twelve Dancing Princesses.

But what is a book fair without getting to pick up a book and open it at random? Below is random page from Daughters of the Air (you can read the opening over at Tin House). Beneath that, a taste of what all is in FTR's Emerald Issue.

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Stay healthy out there! Enjoy yer book browsing & book reading!

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This past weekend was my sixth time attending the AWP conference. My first was in New York in 2008, an overwhelming affair of 8,000 writers crammed into a couple Midtown hotels. That year, I sat on the floor beside a woman from Texas Tech who thought my plan to wait five years before getting an MFA was absurd. The next thing I knew, I was working as a paralegal to save money for graduate school, and by August 2009, I had a full ride to the University of Washington and Michael and I moved cross-country to Seattle. You could say that AWP changed our life pretty radically.

Over the years, we went to a smattering of conferences, but each year I went to fewer and fewer panels, as they tend to repeat and I learned you can only soak up so much information. In 2015 in Minneapolis, I mostly had lunch and dinner with friends, a most pleasant experience, but I'd realized the conference fee had been a waste. Next time, I resolved, I would go to AWP without going to AWP.

Last year in Tampa, with my novel just out, I didn't get to do that. But *this* year, in Portland, it finally happened, and I highly recommend it to folks who've been around the AWP block. I was more relaxed. More hydrated! I had time to stay on top of my online teaching, so less stressed.

Now for some highlights:

Wednesday night, we started at The Old Portland, a wine bar owned by Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols. They only serve old French wine; I misheard the description of the Corsican rosé as "foggy" and enjoyed it very much; Michael enjoyed a ten-year-old red Bordeaux. Then, the very Portland-y (more stoner than twee Portlandia) bartender said, "Yeah, we don't like advertise or anything," and showed us the Odditorium, the band's 10,000-foot "clubhouse," where they rehearse, record, film music videos, and the like. It was cavernous and quiet. Michael, a big Dandy Warhols fan, was in heaven.

"Ice Cream," the mono-print I made at VSC when I was sad that the ice cream shop had closed and there was no ice cream to be had.

Thursday afternoon, we went to the Vermont Studio Center alumni happy hour. I'd finished a first draft of Daughters of the Air there back in 2007. Three former literary staff read poetry from their recent releases. A line from Nandi Comer's American Family: A Syndrome: "If there is blood, the artist has chosen to omit it." Ryan Walsh spoke of the connection between visual art and writing at VSC (I still cherish learning how to make a mono-print there) and vegetable poems. Zayne Turner read from "Her Radioactive Materials."

Most of the other readings I attended featured numerous readers, so, forthwith, more of a collage:

Reading "Cauliflower Tells You"

At Strange Theater: A Fabulist Reading, there were spiders and trousseaus and swans roasted in revenge and Japanese monsters and red rooms and porcine men and tyrants and cauliflower-fueled murder. A doll's head was raffled off, among other trinkets; I offered a rare talisman of Cyndi Lauper's trip to Yemen.

Friday, we went to the PageBoy Magazine Happy Hour, featuring 17-word poems and prose. It was a fun afternoon of zingy one-liners and dreamy experimental works and Gertrude Stein jokes. Then we were off to Literary Bingo with Lilla Lit, a new Portland-based reading series; it was fast and furious with four-minute readings (a loud buzzer ushered off writers going over). Chocolate was pelted at every shout of "bingo!"; I caught a peanut-butter ball overhead with my left hand and won a copy of Jennifer Perrine's In the Human Zoo. I also read a poem and someone won a copy of Daughters of the Air. All readings should have strict word and time limits and buzzers and prizes!

Saturday, we paid $5 to get into the convention center book fair. I had a lovely time chatting with Chicago-based folks in advance of our move (yes! big news tucked away over here; more on that in a future post), signing books at the Lanternfish Press table, and seeing fellow LFP authors Charles J. Eskew (Tales of the Astonishing Black Spark) and Andrew Katz (The Vampire Gideon's Suicide Hotline and Halfway House for Orphaned Girls). It was also super cool meeting Carmen Maria Machado, who signed Her Body and Other Parties and Carmilla, an LFP reprint of a lesbian vampire romance that predates Dracula, with a Borgesian introduction and footnotes by Machado.

Fun!

We also picked up a whole slew of poetry in translation (from Romanian and Hebrew), essays on art, novels, short story collections. I can't wait to read it all! Our last stop was the Northwest Micropress Fair at the Ace Hotel, where I signed copies of Sugar, my chapbook from Chin Music Press, and hung out with regional small presses, which felt like a special little send off before we leave the Pacific Northwest.

I heard that the conference had ballooned to 12,000 (15,000?) attendees. Amazing! Perhaps, perhaps, we'll be in San Antonio next year, and if not San Antonio, Kansas City, and if not Kansas City, Philadelphia...?

Paul Constant of The Seattle Review of Books had some lovely things to say about my new chapbook Sugar: "It’s a delightful little amuse-bouche of a book, with an ending that will charm Seattleites and tourists alike." You can read more here.This Saturday at 3 pm at the Chin Music Press shop in Pike Place Market, I will be reading from Sugar, as well as some foodie excerpts from Daughters of the Air. The fabulous poets Montreux Rotholz and Alex Gallo-Brown will join me, and there will be treats. Constant says it's the literary event of the week! Here is the event on Facebook. Hope to see you there.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

On WA-20 west toward the Anacortes Ferry Terminal, Michael and I found a Spanish radio broadcast with news relayed at a curiously slow pace, so that even we, with our limited Spanish, could understand. It was a multicultural station based in Vancouver. We got news of sex trafficking in Buenos Aires, corruption in Brazil, and an interview about traditional foods in a certain town in Mexico whose name eluded me: horchata tamarindo, pavo, taquitos fritos, plus socializing at church. There was mariachi music, then a pan flute.

In the next hour, the language switched to something I couldn't recognize. Something Scandinavian? South Asian? I had no clue. But then bhangra music came on, so maybe it was Punjabi?

At the ferry checkpoint (we were on our way to Victoria, British Columbia), I lowered the radio, as if customs would find foreign sounds questionable. Once we were on the boat, I switched my phone to airplane mode and concentrated on Mirielle Gansel's Translation as Transhumance (trans. Ros Schwartz), which Michael found at Alley Cat Books in San Francisco, when I was there on book tour in April.

It seemed appropriate to read a memoir and philosophical treatise on the act of translation while crossing into Canadian waters. Gansel's family survived the Holocaust; she grew up in France and remembers the special occasions when a letter would arrive from Budapest and her father would solemnly translate it aloud. Some of her memories remind me of visiting Freiburg, Germany with my grandmother, who spoke a mishmash of Romanian and Hungarian with her cousin and uncle (they saved Hungarian for dirty jokes), and where the cousin's husband spoke German and their children spoke English to me. Here is the lovely excerpt which prompted my reverie:

In the 1960s and '70s, Gansel went on to translate poets from East Berlin and Vietnam. Something she touches upon which I would like to research further is the "de-Nazification" of German and the attempt to translate Vietnamese poetry without exoticization. She mentions Bertolt Brecht de-Nazified Hölderlin's translation of Antigone without comparing examples. But she does offer this translation of poet To Huu (translated into English, in turn, by Ros Schwartz--oh, the layers!):

Casuarina forests,

Groves of green coconuts,

The shimmering of the white dunes

where the sun trembles,

garden of watermelons with red honey!

Gansel quotes Nguyen Khac Vien, who invited her work to on an anthology of Vietnamese poetry in translation: "Exoticism arouses simply a sense of foreignness, without being able to communicate the emotions, the deeper feelings that inspire a work."

On that notion of digging for deeper feelings, Gansel shares her approach to translating the entire oevre of Nelly Sachs, a Jewish German-language poet who lived in exile in Sweden. She ended up rewriting the work four times, using the Bible's four levels of meaning, according to the Jewish tradition of exegesis: Peshat (literal meaning), Remez (allusive meaning), Drush (deeper meaning), and Sod (secret, esoteric meaning).

I could go on and on and on about how much I love this slender volume about exile and empathy.  This book has opened so many doors for me.

 The Seattle Review of Books invited me to participate in their fun & breezy column, "Whatcha Reading?" I touched on dark psychological fiction, heartbreaking poetry, an essay on the cleverness of crows, and more. Something for everyone! Plus: a preview of some Women in Translation Month picks.Over on the Magic Realism blog, Zoe Brooks had this to say about Daughters of the Air: "In every way this is a mature intelligent book which may not suit all readers, but it is an example of how magic realism is so suited to ambiguity and  to difficult subjects." You can read the whole review here. Also, I wrote a very personal essay about life choices here on Healthline.Finally, this Monday at 6:30 pm at the Phinney Neighborhood Association, I will be participating in a panel discussion on the author-editor relationship at the Northwest Independent Editors' Guild. The panel will include Dave Boling, author of The Lost History of Stars and Jamie Swenson of the University of Washington marketing and communications department. Matthew Bennett of the guild will moderate. Not in town but curious about the topic? You can tune in live on YouTube.

Every summer, I am simultaneously excited for and stressed out by the Seattle Public Library and Seattle Arts & Lectures Adult Book Bingo program and Women in Translation Month, which happens in August. These are supposed to be fun efforts to read a lot, and they are fun, and yet I develop anxieties about time. (Ah, time. I am forever losing to time.) In any case, the 2018 book bingo card was recently released, and I eagerly printed out a copy and penciled in my aspirations for the season.So, what are some books on my docket? My ideal reading diet consists of reading fiction, poetry, and nonfiction simultaneously, and my current reading manages three bingo squares:

• Takes Place in the Area You Were Born: 10:04 by Ben Lerner. Lerner will give a talk at Hugo House on August 9, on the novel as a curatorial form. Intriguing!
• Poetry or Essays (why, why aren't these separate boxes?): To Repel Ghosts by Kevin Young, a book of poetry inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which I picked up at the Brooklyn Museum while on book tour.
• Finish a Book You Started and Put Down: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. The second section of this book, on processed food, was dry and slow, and I almost gave up on it. But I am super interested in the section on the rise of organic farming and look forward to the final section on foraging food, the reason I picked up the book in the first place. As I slowly work on a series of lyric essays about food and culture, I am finding Pollan's research and writing mostly delightful and always informative.

Of course, none of these books are by women, nor are they in translation. So, here's what's next for me:

• Written by An Author From Another Country: Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf
• Award-Winning Author: The Appointment by Herta Müller
• Fiction: The Hottest Dishes of Tatar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky

I also participated in the Seattle Public Library's Your Next Five Books program, asking for smart, zippy books by women, ideally in translation. I'll let you know what they recommend!  (In the meantime, if you are looking for recommendations from me, here are my previous posts on women in translation.) What are you reading this summer?UPDATE (5/30/18): Here are the five "smart, zippy books by women" that the Seattle Public Library recommended. I am particularly excited about Umami by Lala Jufresa! From the title, to the author's name, to the promise of a precocious 12-year-old girl protagonist (a soft spot for me), this book will for sure go on my Recommended by a Librarian bingo square.

In my last post I promised blood. Well, I'll just say I slid my boot off Friday night and it was like I was one of Cinderella's stepsisters. I'm still limping. On to day 3!What is a better breakfast than a leftover Cuban sandwich? Leftover fried oysters. Just kidding! The Cuban sandwich was much better. Day 3 was the best because Michael got a one-day pass and we got to roam the book fair together."The Worst Writing Advice I Ever Got" is an irresistible title, so of course we wrenched ourselves away from the book fair for it. Here, without narrative, a fun grab-bag of quotes:

• "Creative writing aphorisms are as useful as Dr. Phil." -Chris Abani
• "Your book won't save you. It's just something you're going to do because you're nuts." -Min Jin Lee
• "How do I handle writer's block? I don't write." -Ada Limón

I appreciated Limón's story of navigating two groups of people: those who roll their eyes at "abuelita poems" and those who say, "where's your abuelita poem?" And Melissa Stein's remark that dread may be a sign that advice you've been given may not be for you, anxiety might mean it's worth exploring the challenge, and excitement is obviously a good sign. Abani noted that "Craft advice is only important if you're asking questions. What are you trying to do?"We stuck around for a reading and conversation between Min Jin Lee and Sigrid Nunez. Nunez on writing about sex: "The vocabulary is not there. It's either coy, clinical, or filthy, none of which do justice to human sexuality." At the book signing, Lee called Michael and me adorable. So that happened.My attention span went out the door by mid-afternoon, so it was off to the hotel bar for wine and fried calamari! Naturally, someone in panda suit wandered in. Next year in Portland! Maybe Seattleites can get some party buses organized...

It's my birthday, and I'm home in Brooklyn. Today is full of treats. Mimosas and chocolate croissants with my family (and bagels, but I've been gorging on bagels since Saturday and have nearly reached my bagel limit), a stroll by Prospect Park, and a reading from Daughters of the Air at WORD Brooklyn at 7 pm. If you're in town and free, I hope you'll come! There will be wine and treats.Over on the Submittable blog, I have a craft essay on poetry's effect on my prose. Here's how it begins:

Poems are tuning forks. When I am lost in the darkness of a novel-in-progress, fumbling through and then and then and then, they key me back into the precise and intimate. They pull me closer to the unknowable.  continue reading

After tonight I have two more stops on my east-of-the-Mississippi tour, in Chicago on Saturday, March 3 at The Book Cellar, with Gint Aras, and then three events at AWP in Tampa: Strange Theater: A Menagerie of Fabulists (Thursday, 3/8, 7 pm); a book signing at Lanternfish Press's table at the book fair Friday (3/9) from 10-11:30 am; and Spontaneous Reading Party by C & R Press Friday (3/9, 7 pm), celebrating the release of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Source Book For Creative Writing. Then I'm back on the West Coast for the next little while, with a full docket of events you can see here. Huzzah!

I'm delighted to have my prose poem "Green Tea in a Pink Room" published in The Sunlight Press today! This is my second poem to be published, after last year's "How Do I Fit This Ghost in My Mouth" in Pacifica Literary Review. Maybe if I publish an average of one poem a year I'll have enough for a collection by my 100th birthday? It's good to have goals.

Dang it. Despite world affairs being horrendous, I'm going to relish some good things that happened in 2016. First, I achieved my goal of obtaining 100 rejections (106!). If you're not getting rejecting 90% of the time, you're not aiming high enough--so goes the wisdom from Creative Capital. The fruits of this labor paid off with eight publications. Here they are, plus other goodness. (Find the zoetrope!) 

• Artist Trust and Gar LaSalle threw a party to celebrate my winning the inaugural Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award. With delicious homemade pizza! Pictures here. Thank you, forever, Gar and Artist Trust. The door this award opened is tremendous. And congrats to the 2016 winner, Peter Mountford! I can't wait to read his next novel, In The Rush of Everything.
• Jewish in Seattle published my personal essay "Threads of Memory" and my first feature article "Art After Auschwitz."
• Steve Barker interviewed me for his podcast Ordinary Madness. Check out his debut essay collection Now For The Disappointing Part.
• Pacifica Literary Review published "How Do I Fit This Ghost In My Mouth," my first poem.
• The Rumpus published my personal essay "Used To Be Schwartz," featuring a very sad ham sandwich.
• M & I traveled to the Netherlands so I could research Novel #3.
• The anthology Airplane Reading included my essay "Mapping Imagination," about travelling to Argentina to research Novel #1, Dirty.
• The Jack Straw Cultural Center released a podcast  from my 2015 fellowship, in which I discussed with Kevin Craft Novel #2, Paralegal, and read an excerpt. It's got cabbage and spite in it.
• The Los Angeles Review of Books published my essay "Dark Fruit: A Cultural and Personal History of the Plum." Hooray for plums! This essay was a loooooong time in the making.
• Syntax & Salt published two micro-fairy tales.
• For their 30th Anniversary celebration, Artist Trust included my story "Cauliflower Tells You" in the window of V2, a temporary collaborative arts space that used to be a Value Village. The party was super fun; I especially enjoyed Cathy McClure's installation in the elevator, "Such a Nasty Woman." It's similar to her piece "Carnival of Life" except with female figurines.
• Moss published my story "Don't Worry," inspired by something disturbing I overheard at Anne Frank Huis.
• Though I am sad Corinne and I brought The Furnace to a close, our farewell evening was just beautiful. Lisa Nicholas-Ritscher closed out the night by leading a sing along to "Dance Me To The End of Love" with the help of the klezmer group The Schtick Figures. Ah, Leonard Cohen! RIP.

My plans for the holidays including gorging myself on kreplach, cholent, pizza, and rainbow cookies and devouring Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Paula Fox's Desperate Characters. Happy winter solstice!

As the year winds down into its darkest days, I hope you'll join me for one of these events. If you come to two, I will give you a lollipop.

• Friday, December 2, at 8 pm: The Furnace Says Goodnight at Hollow Earth Radio. Thirteen Furnace writers contributed pieces that Corinne and I have woven into a single story. The pieces are at turns raw, luminous, defiant, and hopeful. I'm super excited to see the collaboration come alive on stage.  And there will be klezmer music! Please come help us celebrate our last performance. If you're not in town, you can tune in online at hollowearthradio.org.
• Wednesday, December 7, at 7 pm: Superfriends: Moss + Pacifica at Open Books. Two literary magazines near and dear to me are having launch parties for their latest issues. I'm in Moss #6! Pacifica published my first poem back in March.
• Tuesday, December 13, at 7 pm: Seattle Fiction Federation at Richard Hugo House.  A fiction-full night! I'm reading alongside Steve Sibra, Lucy Hitz, and Donna Miscolta, whose story collection Hola and Goodbye just came out from Carolina Wren Press. There's also an open mic, so come with up to 5 minutes of fiction to share.

Women in Translation Month is around the corner! Last year, I compiled a list of translated books by women that I enjoyed and created a Women in Translation Bingo game. I also wrote about novellas by Marguerite Duras and Eileen Chang and poetry collections from Rocío Cerón and Angélica Freitas.This summer has been a bit more hectic as I've been teaching more, taking my second novel through an eighth draft, and researching my third novel. However! I'm excited for Women In Translation Month and wanted to share with you four books on my to-read pile.What have you been reading?

I'm very happy to report that "How Do I Fit This Ghost in My Mouth," my first published poem, is up on Pacifica Literary Review's website. The piece was inspired by Geoffrey Farmer's exhibit of the same name at the Vancouver Art Gallery back in September. Many thanks to editor Matt Muth!

Many thanks to Samudre Media for documenting Pay Dirt, the event culminating a year + of work on my novel PARALEGAL, thanks to an Art Project grant from 4Culture and a Jack Straw Fellowship. The Samudres do beautiful work in the Seattle arts community.

August is Women in Translation Month (WITMonth), designed to encourage readers, reviewers, publishers, and translators to explore more books in translation by women. If you've been following the VIDA count, then the grim statistics around women in translation (gathered diligently by Meytal Radzinski) is, unfortunately, not a surprise: women writers comprise only about 30% of books translated into English. As I'm passionate about cultivating a diverse literary ecosystem, this is a project near and dear to my heart. And though I'm happy WITMonth is an annual event, I'm getting started right now. Because there are SO MANY good books and I'm sure there are SO MANY MORE out there waiting to be picked up by a publisher and gobbled by readers.I immediately pulled all the books from my shelves that fit the bill. I made a read pile and a to-be-read pile. Of the read pile, I'd like to make some recommendations, for those of you who'd like to join me in WITMonth. Read these books! And I'll be diving into the to-be-read pile and writing about the gems in that pile in August. Read those books too! Let's talk about 'em!Recommended BooksDeath in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda, translated from Catalan by Martha Tennent (Open Letter, 2009). A gorgeously written and harrowing novel about cruelty among humans and violence in nature.Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2005). A dark, slender novel about a woman abandoned by her husband spiraling into terrifying psychological territory, with a helpful dash of absurd humor and redemption. After devouring this book, anything else was VERY difficult to get into. So good. This brief review in The New Yorker is spot on. I have not cracked open her more recent Neapolitan series, but it is definitely on the docket.The End of the Story by Liliana Heker, translated from Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger (Biblioasis, 2012). Another dark novel. I'm sensing a trend? This metafictional work explores Argentina's Dirty War. I reviewed it for Ploughshares.Death as a Side Effect by Ana Maria Shua, translated from Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger (University of Nebraska Press, 2010). As I note briefly in my review of Heker's novel, Shua's is "dark and wry and screwed up in the best possible dystopian way." Is it weird to quote myself? Oh well.Dreams and Stones by Magdalena Tulli, translated from Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books, 2004). I adore Archipelago for focusing on translation and producing truly beautiful books. Dreams and Stones is probably the least dark book on my list, a kind of treatise on cities and imagination.Mile End by Lise Tremblay, translated from French by Gail Scott (Talon Books, 2002). I read this novel a few times, starting in a class in college on literary Montreal. It's set in the neighborhood I lived in while at McGill, which may be part of my attachment to it. And, yes, yes, this is another dark story, about an obese pianist at a ballet school teetering toward psychosis.The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller, translated from German by Michael Hoffman (Metropolitan Books, 1996). Muller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature, paints a grim picture of life in Romania under Ceausescu. The language is highly poetic, and I've been working on an essay about it (among other things) for quite some time. In fact, the assignment I've given myself for the next few weeks is to cut that essay up paragraph by paragraph to figure out how to keep going with it.Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta by Aglaja Veteranyi, translated from German by Vincent Kling (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012). Told from the point of view of an unnamed young woman, this is the story of Romanian refugees who travel through Europe as circus performers. Yes, yes, dark. But also with absurd humor. (Some criticize Muller for being humorless. I say, bah. Read her still. Not everything is funny ha ha.)Phew. That's a lot of recommendations. There are more in my pile. I may write more about them. More likely I will tweet my favorite bits from them in August. But not just August. Probably all year. WITForever!My To-Be-Read Pile. Stay tuned for reviews & more !

The Jack Straw  May Reading Series kicks off on May 1! I'm so excited to see my fellow fellows sharing new work and putting our voice and performance coaching into action. Each Friday evening at 7 pm, four writers (one prose writer and three poets) will perform their work. A suggested donation of $5 gets you a copy of the 2015 Jack Straw Anthology; a light reception will follow.

This Sunday at 2 pm, I'm reading at the kick-off event for the South Sound Writers' Reading Series in Des Moines, WA with five very talented women that I met through ArtistTrust: Lynn Knight, Kristen Millares Young, Patty Kinney, Claire Thornburgh, and Judith Gille. The series is organized by another very talented woman, Jannát Bey, and will take place at the Des Moines Library: 21620 11th Ave S, Des Moines, Washington 98198. I'm looking forward to the field trip out of Seattle.Then on Monday is the launch party for issue #2 of Pacifica! The theme, Sea Change, has brought some gorgeous art and writing our way. Join us at the Pine Box at 8:30. Fun!

Recently, a gardening-savvy friend got me excited about what will crop up in our yard as the weather warms - lilacs, cherries, and plums, oh my! I just have to get through these last cold, muddy weeks. Luckily, I've got three readings on the horizon that will sneak me right into spring, all at the loverly Richard Hugo House:

• Tuesday, February 5, 8 pm - The Castalia Reading Series - This is the monthly reading series for the UW MFA program, and I get to read as an alum for the first time. I'm reading alongside fellow alum & poet Rachel Welty and students Derek Robbins, Jay Yencich, and Kristine Greive.
• Friday, February 15, 7:30 pm - Made at Hugo House Midyear Reading - As a part of the Made at Hugo House Fellowship, the fellows (Bill Carty, Irene Keliher, Eric McMillan, Katharine Ogle, Elissa Washuta, and me) will be sharing new work produced in the first half of the program.
• Thursday, March 21, 7:00 pm - Cheap Beer & Prose - I'm reading alongside Nicole Hardy, Corinne Manning, and Kristen Young as a part of the series' annual ladies' night. Wee!

Addendum: At the Pine Box, Monday, February 11, 7:30 pm - Pacifica Launch Party - The literary magazine I help edit is launching its first issue! Lisa Nicholas-Ristcher, Maggie MK Hess, Sarah Kathyrn Moore, Leena Joshi, Joannie Stangeland, and Jake Uitti will be reading, and the book, designed by Ryan Diaz, is beeeeautiful.

October in Seattle will be brimming with literary events. Between Arts Crush, City Arts Fest and a whole slew of other goodies, I'll be glad I went back to drinking coffee and taking my multivitamins! Here are a few events I'm involved with, one way or another:

• Wed. Oct. 3, 6-7 pm. The Furnace Reading Series Presents "The Last Night at Manuela's" .What happens when a stage play is adapted for radio? That's what Buffy Aakaash has done with his award-winning play, which is set in Mexico on the Day of the Dead. Come watch it live as it's broadcast on Hollow Earth Radio! We'll have hot chocolate on hand (just sayin'). This is a free and featured Arts Crush event made possible with support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Hosted by Corinne Manning. (Nb: I kicked off this free quarterly series in August and now help to coordinate it.) Facebook Twitter

• Sun. Oct. 6, 6-7 pm. Sunset Reading on the Melrose Promenade. An evening of poetry and sunset-gazing featuring the fabulously talented poets Brian McGuigan, Elizabeth Cooperman, and Katherine Ogle, plus one of the best views in Seattle.  One of a string of events promoting the Melrose Promenade project, which is working toward making Melrose Avenue Seattle's next great open space.

• Sat. Oct. 27, 1-5 pm. Found Stories at Richard Hugo House. I'm teaching a one-day class using found objects as generative material for new fiction. Fun! And then, right afterwards...

• Sat. Oct. 27, 6 pm. Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues reading series at Liberty Bar in Capitol Hill. I'm thrilled to be reading with Eugene Cross, Jane Wong, Katherine DeBlassie, Matthew Nienow, and Suzanne Morrison. Hosted by Zachary Watterson.

Then of course, there's the marathon Seattle Lit Crawl on Thursday, October 18, meandering from First Hill to Capitol Hill from 5 to 10 pm at which many of my talented writer friends will be reading.Whew! I think in November I might need a nap.